Writing up a storm

The new project is simply flying along. It may be all rubbish but I don't care; the words are flowing and I'm having tons of fun with it. I've done at least a thousand words a day since I started it. Incredible. If I keep this rate up I'll have it finished by mid-March! I won't of, course. Right now I'm in a bit of a lull, work-wise, so I have plenty of time to devote to it. Once eh new projects kick in I won't be able to play but until then I'm going to give it its head and let it run where it wants.

And the beat goes on

I wrote over 1200 words today! I'm amazed! The story is leaping on to the page. Can't explain it; I'm not even going to try. I hope I can keep it up.

I've shelved Project Tevan for the moment. I intend to finish it, but for now it has be off the stove. It will benefit from the new project and the new energy I've tapped into, I'm sure.

Wow! Where did this come from?

Soemthing very odd happened to me this morning. I was driving in to work which in itself is fairly odd -- I only go to the office very occassionally -- when a story that has been at the back of my mind for years now suddenly burst into life. The names: the characters: the plot. Even a tentative title. The whole shebang in fact; and even odder, I've just written a complete "line-for-scene" breakdown of the entire thing. I don't do that. It isn't my way of working. It isn't even my genre. And it only took me about 30 minutes to do it. Really!
Will it go anywhere? Don't know yet, but I'm excited to see. I've posted the 608 words of my "line-for-scene". With any luck I'll be posting lots more words. I hope you will be too.

On Autumn

What's your favorite season? Mine is definitely Autumn ( Fall, if you really must). I was sitting in our screened porch yesterday looking up at the trees; Ida knocked about a month's worth of leaves off as she rolled by last week. I don't mind that, and we needed the rain. Anyway, I was looking at the sky through a tracery of branches and leaves. It was simply stunning. The russets and golds and browns catching the sunlight; touches of red from the dogwood berries; the drab greens of the leaves that have yet to give up the ghost entirely; the silver gray of the branches against the brilliant blue sky. A spectacular sight.

You'd have no problem telling that Autumn is my favorite season if you glanced into my closet. Those are the predominant shades there. If I glanced in your closet would I be able to guess your favorite season? Have you stocked up on the yellows and lavenders and violets and bright, fresh greens of Spring? Or are you a sand and ochre and orange and pale blue person who loves Summer. Or maybe I'd find grays and whites and blacks with splashes of red of a winter lover.

What IS your favorite season?

Ggggrrrrr

You would think, given my previous blog post, that I would be doing my best to avoid adding to my frustration level, wouldn't you? If you do think that you clearly do not know me at all.

So

At work, the next part of the project is to install a new piece into the already vastly complex and complicated puzzle that this client laughingly calls their E-Business environment. This is the kind of thing that I love. I get great satisfaction from installing new software and making it work. So what's the problem? Well. To do the job right on new hardware, did I mention that we need new hardware even though we have about half of HP's server output for the last three years already? I exaggerate, but we already have 26 Linux servers. 26! And who knows how many NT boxes? I certainly don't. And this is not a Fortune 100 company!

Back to the plot.

To do the job right on new hardware it is normal to obtain said hardware several weeks before it will be deployed into Production, so that it can "burn in". Normal is the operative word in that sentence. Needless to say, that is not the way it's going to be. The new hardware is supposed to be on the dock today, racked and powered tomorrow, and the OS installed next week -- if the temporary System Admin can spare the time ( the one that was on permanent staff left three months ago and hasn't been replaced.) I've been given three days to install the new part of the software. Three days is not enough. But as my protestations fell on deaf ears; that is the way it will be. So as I don't like to make a complete pratt of myself in front of an audience, I went out at the weekend and bought myself a cheap 64-bit PC so that I could practice the install and shake out the problems. And that's just fine. I don't mind that at all.

Brought the new PC home and immediately installed Oracle's version of Linux 4 Update 8 and all was fine… until… until I tried to install Oracle's Virtualization software. The idea was to create two Virtual Machines on my new Linux 64 bit computer so I could emulate the exact environment I'll be using in two weeks. I've struggled for 4 days with it and every day is worse than the last. So now I've given up with that idea and I'm going to install the database and part of the application on 64-bit and the rest of the application on one of my 32-bit computers and link them through my tiny LAN. The really annoying thing is that I could have done this days ago, instead of grinding my teeth and wasting all this time.

And still I haven't written a single new word on Project Tevan. I could have tried to do that instead of pouring out this blather. But at least when I blog I'm writing something other than soul-destroying technical documentation with a blow-by-blow account of what I did which is what I have to do every day. And that is good enough for now.